Monday, August 01, 2011

19 items returned from MET to go on display in Egypt

Preparations are in full swing at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to display the newly arrived collection of Tutankhamun’s tomb, offered to Egypt by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET).

This collection includes 19 objects from Tutankhamun's tomb, which were formerly in the private collections of archaeologist, Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb and Lord Caernarvon, who sponsored the early 20th century excavation.

These small-scale objects are divided into two groups. Fifteen of them have the status of bits or samples, while the remaining four are of more significant art-historical interest and include a small bronze dog, a small faience sphinx bracelet-element and a collar of beads.

The pieces were acquired by Carter's niece after they had been probated with his estate and were later recognised to have been noted in the tomb records, although they do not appear in any excavation photographs. Two other pieces include a part of a handle and a broad collar accompanied by additional beads, which entered the collection because they were found in 1939 among the contents of Carter's house in Luxor. All of the contents of that home were bequeathed by Carter to the MET.

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This blog was set up in 2004 to aggregate news about Egyptology and related topics from online sources on a regular basis. It was closed finally in September 2013 due to other commitments. It has been left open as an archive, but comments have been disabled.